Google News Gets a Makeover

Google make news more accessible and easier to navigate with their new desktop design. Placing focus on facts, diverse perspective and more control for users.

With web design constantly evolving, even the big guns need to stay ahead of the curve, which is why Google have announced their new user interface for Google News.

So, what’s changed?

They’ve adopted a card format, which makes it easier to browse, scan and identify related articles about a particular story.

The new interface focuses on key elements, like publisher names and article labels. You can even maintain your place on the page as you click in and out of stories and explore topics.

You can also customise the news you see with a dedicated navigation column down the left hand side.

Simplified Navigation

Unlike many online news outlets, Google has stripped back the navigation bar to just include ‘Headlines’, ‘Local’, and ‘For You’. In order to create a truly personalised experience, upon signing in you can choose what appears in the ‘Local’ and ‘For You’ categories.

You can create your own mini news feed and fill it with anything and everything you’re interested in. This slimmed down navigation allows Google to stay competitive with mobile-first news readers like Apple News and social platform news functions such as Facebook and Twitter.

Enjoy Different Perspectives With Story Cards

Gain a well-rounded understanding of an issue with story cards. Upon first view you get a glance into a story then from there you can go a level deeper and read related articles with different points of view which are labeled with helpful tags.

Fact Check

In an effort to become as transparent as possible and give the content within news articles credibility, Google have introduced the Fact Check label so users can get easy access to fact checking articles that specifically investigate claims made in the story.

These articles are now housed in a block within the ‘Headlines’ tab, however it’s only available to users in the U.S at present.

The Emergence of Video

Everyone loves a good video, if anything it’s become more normal to digest news via video content than it has to sit and scroll through written content.

Google have made improvements to the algorithmic selection of video content within the News section. They’ve also made more related videos available whilst a video is playing.

Revamped Settings Feature

In a step towards full personalisation, Google have given the user full control over exactly what they see. They’ve gone as far as to let users to name custom sections and type in interests so that they can identify news sources that you want to see more of.

As with most Google updates, it’s only available to users in the U.S. but they will be rolling it out globally very soon.